Are you saying that all politicians are criminals?
No, I am not. The phrasing of my question explicitly referenced "
the criminals who haven't" dropped out of a race - NOT "
all politicians who haven't" done so. Hence, any politicians who are NOT criminals are not a subject of my question. Of course, the question then becomes, "What do we mean by 'criminal'?" Do we mean the mere violation of this, that or the other statutory rule(s) enacted & enforced by the State - or do we mean the violation of fundamental principles of justice, liberty and the rule of law? Yee's opponents may not be criminals by the former defintion - but they may very well be by the latter. (And if they are, then do Yee's statutory peccadilloes really matter that much in the "bigger picture" you mention next ... ?)
That and the merits of democratic process in a Republic are bigger picture issues.
I think the latter of the above definitions of "criminal" is
much more significant, important, relevant & dispositive than the former when it comes to the "bigger picture" involving the "democratic process in a Republic." Padilla and Peterson may not be "statutory" criminals - but that is merely the absence of a negative, not the presence of a positive.
As far as the the Padilla and Peterson voters, see my OP. They aren't necessarily any more well informed. They may just like the names. But we can say that the people who voted for Yee missed the fact that he wasn't in the race anymore.
But we could say
exactly the same thing - i.e., that they "missed the fact that [Yee] wasn't in the race anymore" - about many (probably most, and theoretically even all) of the people who voted for Padilla or Peterson, too. So what warrant have we been given to exempt any significant number of Padilla and Peterson voters from the
very same assessment we are being invited to apply to Yee voters? Why should we single out the ones who voted for Yee as "sheer" ignoramuses (as did the political science professor in the OP article)?
I get what you're saying (i.e., that some Padilla and Peterson voters are ignoramuses, too), and I completely agree with you as far as it goes. I just think it goes even further (and gets even worse) than that. Those "ignorant" Yee voters are not especially "bad" as voters go - that is, there doesn't seem to be anything we can say about Yee voters that couldn't be applied
just as much to Padilla and Peterson voters.
There will be a portion of the Peterson and Padilla voters who were well-informed. The same can't be said about any of the Yee voters.
On the contrary - it might be that the same
can be said about some of the Yee voters.
We can't simply say that
everyone who voted for Yee must have been "ill-informed" and unaware that he had dropped out.
Many people voted for Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012 knowing full well that he was "out of the race" - but they voted for him anyway.
How many Yee voters knowingly did the same - because they preferred him, or as a protest vote against the other Democrat, or whatever?
Granted, there might not be very many Yee voters who were aware he had dropped out. But there surely could be some. And no particular reason has been given for thinking that the portion of "well-informed" Padilla or Peterson voters who knew that Yee was out is significantly greater than the portion of "well-informed" Yee voters who knew that Yee was out. So to repeat what I said earlier: there doesn't seem to be anything we can say about Yee voters that couldn't be applied
just as much to Padilla and Peterson voters.
The more, and also the well informed voters who probably would have voted for Yee (D) most likely switched to Padilla (D).
Being "well-informed" because you do not vote for a candidate that you know has dropped out of a race is not,
ceteris paribus, any real improvement over being "ignorant" because you vote for a candidate that you do not know has dropped out of a race. I would much rather live in a democracy under which an "ignorant" majority of voters unwittingly vote for "dropped out" candidates who support things like fewer or lower taxes, non-interventionsim, economic freedom, civil liberties, etc. than one in which a "well-informed" majority of voters (who are "up" on all the latest political punditry and scandals) vote for candidates who support things like more or higher taxes, interventionism, economic regulation, restrictions on or violations of civil liberties, etc.
But as the OP story reveals, democracy is a mass exercise in Pavlovian lever-pulling. And even worse, whether the lever-pullers are "ignorant" or "well-informed" doesn't really seem to matter much in the end - da pooch is gonna get scrood either way.
